


the killer in me is the killer in you

by orphan_account



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Dysfunctional romance?, Guilt, M/M, One Shot, Regret, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-20
Updated: 2013-03-20
Packaged: 2017-12-05 22:17:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/728507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Thank you,” his King murmurs into Merlin’s hair, and Merlin sobs, helplessly nods against the chest before him, because what else can he do? He would do it all over again.——They fight in a war, Arthur’s wounded, and Merlin loses it quite a bit. (2k+)</p>
            </blockquote>





	the killer in me is the killer in you

**Author's Note:**

> Yeeeaaaah, man, don’t ask me. I’d actually planned to write a d/s fic, along the lines of Merlin’s magic makes him do crazy things in war because he needs to protect Arthur, which, in turn, makes him lose control and Arthur’s there to reign him back in, but… Idek. It went haywire after the first paragraph. I don’t seem to be able to write… uh, things that are _not_ dripping with pseudo-poetical prose or angst or some such stuff. Just. I don’t know. Maybe, if I’m setting out to write something serious and angsty, I’ll be lucky next time and actually come up with my d/s fic?
> 
> Oh, and obviously Merlin's magic is revealed and he's pretty much Court Sorcerer here.

i used to be a little boy  
so old in my shoes  
and what i choose is my choice  
what’s a boy supposed to do?  
the killer in me is the killer in you,  
my love.

‘disarm’—smashing pumpkins

 

Smoke is everywhere. It lingers in the air, thickly, clogs up Merlin’s lungs when he breathes in. Walking forward he steps on stones, but he’s so far gone he doesn’t care. There is pain as they dig into the skin of his bare feet, less at the sole and more in the arch, where the skin is softer, more vulnerable. It’s not as much as a stab from a knife, it’s more—it’s round, in a way, round where it pushes against him as if trying to get through his skin, to sink inside into his muscles and blood, anchoring and festering there like an external pain made internal, growing like an infection around his bones, fat and hindering, until he can’t walk anymore. It’s pressure, when he stops with a particularly large and peaked stone under his foot, it’s pressure incrementally increasing until it feels more like a knife digging in and less like something round. It hurts, and it’s good.

The corpses around him lie like wilted flowers on dead grass, the blood seeping out like the water Merlin has forgotten to pour over them. It’s a canvas of destruction, blood splatters on armour and weapons and bodies and the ground, everywhere. There is not a step Merlin can take, a breath he can breathe that doesn’t reek of a graveyard of broken bones. Ghosts rise from the corpses, and Merlin can’t do a thing but watch them, detached, claw their way towards him, white translucence stained red from their surroundings.

They have no faces. Merlin’s past that by now. He lets them devour him, lets them eat at him until they reach the inside, because for all his external cleanness—clothes not torn, skin unblemished—it’s inside where he’s dirty, where he’s as dirty as them—dirtier, _dirtier_ , the cause of the havoc, his golden eyes the cataclysm of the mass-murder that occurred here, still glowing strong, still not satisfied, still a beast hungry for blood after imbibing so much of it that it’s filled his entire body and is bubbling up his throat until he’s choking on the thick red trickling out through the gaps of his teeth, running down his chin.

On this wasteland, he’s the Queen standing tall and proud with his bloodied hands stretched out before him, commanding storms and fires and deluges with a bare crook of his finger. He’s the Queen, the best defendant on this chess board, the most powerful piece: one thought, and the earth will shake apart in its very foundations, the ground will crack open to swallow every single enemy in a bottomless abyss, closing again once they’ve fallen, like a wound stitched together, creating a grave to bury them alive. He’s the Queen without mercy, face expressionless and eyes hard. They never listen to him, when he warns them with softly-spoken words to step back and run away. They never listen, and he doesn’t repeat himself. He’s learnt that most of them don’t have the patience to listen to the single tall and thin man that’s shoved his way through the army behind him to stand at the top. They don’t have the patience, and when he remembers the first time he’s made the mistake of repeating himself—a crossbow shooting past him, piercing one of Camelot’s men standing in the first row—it shudders through him violently, the knowledge that this is his to do. This is his destiny, being a killer, remorseless and cold-blooded. The tears he begins to cry when his eyes burst into gold and the first men fall before his feet as easily as he breathes, those do not count. The guilt in his chest, so heavy a pressure he fears his ribs to splinter apart, that does not count. His sleepless nights, wrecked with feverish delirium the first days after combat, those do not count. He still kills. Each and every time.

It’s his destiny, being the last standing chess piece before the King; he is whatever his King needs him to be—pawn, knight, bishop or rook—but tonight he is the Queen, standing side by side with his King, chest heaving for breath from the magic that’s just pulsed forth from his fingers, a nuclear weapon centuries before its development. Where there was grass there’s upturned earth now, trees blasted away, leaving spots of scorched ground. He’s the victor of this game—he always, always is—the victor with the weeping face and trembling hands because he’s not strong to not conjure ghosts and command them to eat away at him, like his magic ate away the flesh from their bones.

And before he falls his King is there, fingers tight on his arms and hauling him upwards, towards himself. Merlin’s pulse flutters on the insides of his wrists like a trapped butterfly as he feels Arthur’s warm breath on his forehead, coming fast but steady, steady.

“Shhh,” is the first thing Arthur says after having seen his warlock massacring an entire army with the tilt of his head, the bend of his finger. Like Merlin’s not a violent, untamed beast that could tear him apart with a mere thought, in the tenth of a second if he just _willed_ it. “I’ve got you,” he says, like Merlin’s not the cause of the innumerable corpses lying rigid, unmoving and cold around them. Merlin’s so consumed by the ghosts before his mind’s eye, so lost in the language of death that Arthur’s words are foreign, that he can’t understand them. The only thing he can understand now is the strength of Arthur’s hands, the warmth of them as they card through his hair, cradle the back of his head and pet down his quivering spine. Warmth is a language he can understand—not the singeing heat of freshly spilled blood, but the warmth of a body, of Arthur’s body, of Arthur’s _living_ body, and it steals Merlin’s breath away, the wonder of Arthur so close, still alive, and Merlin hasn’t failed, he hasn’t failed. Failing is not an option, it’s just not, and his nostrils flare with the memory of the moment before it all went to hell—the moment before Merlin snarled like a raging beast, irrational, unthinking, and threw his hands out to unleash a supernova, spoke words that wrapped him and Arthur and Arthur’s men in a cocoon of safety while he shot the advancing army to hell, slaughtered every single one of their men like an unskilled butcher with the violent, fierce single-mindedness that came from the thought that they were the enemy, always the enemy when they are a threat to Arthur. And now, Merlin remembers, the moment that made him lose it, and he raises his head to look up at Arthur with his eyes, still glaring brightly with the magical burn inside, still acutely alert to any potential threat to Arthur’s well-being.

Arthur stares resolutely back, his blue eyes finding Merlin’s bastard eyes unerringly, unflinchingly, calm despite the crude gash slashed on his face, straight across it from his forehead, just underneath his eye, above the bridge of his nose, diagonally across his cheek to the curve of his jaw. Merlin flinches as he sees it, the thought of what if, what if he hadn’t done it, what if Arthur had moved in the wrong moment—it makes the demons inside die away instantly.

“It’s all right,” Arthur says, and all the self-disgust and regret dissolve into thin air as Merlin listens to the timbre of his voice, a calm forced over the tremble of the pain from the vicious wound gaping open on his face. Merlin stares at the man before him, still standing strong, and shakes his head, because it’s not all right, it’s not, and Arthur could’ve almost lost his eye if Merlin wouldn’t still be, after all this time, so stupidly hesitant at the eve of battle. He begins crying then; the mere thought of losing Arthur in any shape is his Achilles heel, the one thing that brings down his deadly armour of necessary, enforced apathy. It tears sobs from his chest, the thought, the thought of Arthur’s body cold and his eyes lifeless, hurts more than the remorse and guilt over being a ruthless killer. Arthur’s warmth so close is a wonder, the warmth of his chest against Merlin’s cheek, the warmth of the flat of his palm agains the nape of Merlin’s neck a magic so profound and simple, the most beautiful kind of magic Merlin’s ever known. It makes him abhor and love his own magic even more, in this instant; while his magic is the only thing that makes him someone instead of no one, it’s also the kind of magic that can make the veins in a man’s body explode from Merlin’s uncontrolled ire, making him haemorrhage to death from the inside. It’s not the kind of magic that allows him to shadow Arthur’s face with his hands to heal the gaping wound, but it’s—it’s the kind of magic that can prevent other things, _worse_ things, and as much as he abhors it because sometimes it makes him a monster—he’d never let it go. He’d never let it go, because it’s a gift, it’s a cursed gift given to him for Arthur’s sake, and he’ll be whatever his King needs him to be—pawn, knight, bishop or rook—and tonight it makes him the Queen, standing in front of the King and sobbing into his chest. He’s the victor of this game—he always, always is—the victor with the weeping face and trembling hands because he’ll never be ruthless enough to obliterate his overwhelming need for Arthur to be safe, to be whole, to be happy, to be _here_.

And he loves his King, loves his King with the strong, merciful heart and the kind, soft eyes that look at him warmth, with warmth still, despite having witnessed the disasters looming inside Merlin’s mind. He loves his King and his King loves him through it, and Merlin would never serve another—there is no one else, there never will be anyone else quite like him, and Merlin, instinctively, knows he will walk with the burden of loneliness on his back, will walk barren wastelands conjured by his own horror such as this for centuries to come, waiting for his King to come back when it is time for him to leave.

“Thank you,” his King murmurs into Merlin’s hair, and Merlin sobs, helplessly nods against the chest before him, because what else can he do? He would do it all over again. There is no remorse, no guilt—Merlin will be his King’s Queen if need be, but he will always, always be a killer for his King.

But his King transform back into the person behind it that Merlin loves even more, and it is Arthur whose hands tighten in Merlin’s hair, fist it to drag his head back forcefully until Merlin is looking at him through blue eyes rimmed with gold. It is Arthur whose eyes soften as he sees the distress on Merlin’s face, and always, the helpless, endless devotion. It is Arthur and not the King who bestows a soft kiss upon Merlin’s quivering, pliant lips, gives it not to the Queen or the killer, but to Merlin, just Merlin. This is from Arthur to Merlin, and Merlin knows, with a flash of blinding clarity that settles securely, firmly in his bones, that if Arthur were no King, there would be no difference.

He would still be everything Arthur needed, always—always. On the top he fights for the King, to conquer lands or raze down enemies—because the King is Arthur. If it were anyone else—no, no.

And maybe, Merlin thinks hazily, through the smack of lips, wet and soft and slow, his eyelids fluttering closed—maybe it’s not that bad after all, maybe he’s not a monster, not really. It’s love that drives him to vile frenzies such as today, that makes the magic thrum underneath his skin, alert and dangerous, like poisonous snakes curling around his feet, ready to strike. It’s love that makes him do it, only he’s lucky enough to have his gift to defend his love—who’s to say that none of the others, none of their enemies would have done the same, had they been in possession of his power?

Yes, he thinks, his cheeks wet with tears, tasting them on his lips along with the sweet copper of Arthur’s blood on Arthur’s tongue—yes, there is nothing to regret.

And it is Arthur and not the King, it is Arthur who pulls back and drags his teeth over Merlin’s lower lip. Who holds Merlin still with the hand in his hair, demands all of Merlin’s attention as he looks with his calm, determined eyes into Merlin’s own.

It is Arthur who says, “I would’ve done the same for you,” softly, into the space between their mouths. Whose hair tightens in Merlin’s hair and pulls, again, creating a sting of pain that anchors Merlin into this moment of reality, banishes the last of Merlin’s ghosts from the edges of perception.

It is Arthur who says, “And I wouldn’t regret a thing,” in a hiss, and it is Merlin whose careless hands find Arthur’s sweaty, bloody hair and drag him forward. It is Merlin, kissing Arthur, who answers in kind.

**Author's Note:**

> P.S. Please don’t kill me for making Merlin this ruthless. I know he prefers to knock his enemies out by throwing objects at them or making them fly into things, but I quite like this… other way?
> 
> P.P.S. Yeah, _of course_ Arthur is strong enough with that wound on his face to still snog Merlin on the battlefield. DUH.


End file.
